


Making Faces

by DesertScribe



Category: The Tick (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Jack-o'-lanterns, Pumpkin carving, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-09 23:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16459514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: Arthur and the Tick try to get ready for Halloween.





	Making Faces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lorelei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorelei/gifts).



It was a quiet Halloween afternoon. Later, they would go out on patrol. For the moment, though, they were simply sitting around Arthur's apartment and indulging in some traditional pre-Halloween activities, just because they could.

_*Splurtch*_

"Sorry, friend, but we're almost done," the big blue superhero known as the Tick said. He gently patted the side of the pumpkin which he was 'carving,' completely oblivious to any irony which might have been imparted to the gesture by the fact that his hand was coated in said pumpkin's slimy orange pumpkin innards.

The Tick was not one for using knives, not even when it came to carving Jack-o-lanterns. Even after Arthur explained the underlying idea (because, of course, Halloween, just like almost everything else in the world, seemed to be something which the Tick had had no concept of before Arthur introduced him to it but enthusiastically embraced once he did), the Tick insisted that it didn't feel right to stab an innocent squash which had been minding its own business and not harming anyone. Arthur wasn't sure how poking a super strong finger through the pumpkin's flesh was any better in that regard, but if the Tick was willing to give the pumpkin 'a friendly handshake that goes all the way through' to get around his aversion to weapons, then Arthur didn't want to ruin either the Tick's or his own fun by arguing about it.

_*Splurtch*_

"See, that wasn't so bad," the Tick told his pumpkin. "And, look! Now you have binocular vision! Isn't that great? You can use your newfound depth perception to better ward off potential supernatural evil-doers! Arthur," the Tick said, grinning as he held up the large newly-made Jack-o-lantern for the man who was his sidekick, roomie, and BFF to inspect, "my pumpkin has a face!" And it was a surprisingly good face, too, considering simple method and blunt instrument used to shape it. The round eyes and slightly crooked mouth were just basic shapes, but together they formed a Jack-o-lantern which seemed to have as much boundless enthusiasm for life as its maker did. "How's yours going?"

"It's, um," Arthur said as he contemplated the smaller white-shelled pumpkin in his own hands. He frowned at the mess he had made. The Tick may have gotten covered in pumpkin slime up to his elbows (how? _How_ had he managed that without ever sticking more than a finger into the pumpkin? Arthur had been watching him the whole time and still didn't know) but at least he hadn't ended up scattering little jagged fragments of pumpkin flesh everywhere within a four foot radius the way that Arthur had somehow managed to do despite going slowly and carefully and trying not to make a mess, so the Tick's method seemed to have unexpected merit.

Or maybe Arthur was just terrible at this. He had thought the white pumpkin would be fun to try to carve to look like a skull, but he hadn't actually carved a Jack-o-lantern since before his father had died, hadn't been allowed to handle knives for a lot of that time to be honest, and was thus severely out of practice, not that he had ever been much in practice to begin with. "It's going," Arthur settled for saying. "Maybe. I guess?"

"Can I see?"

Arthur sighed and turned the white pumpkin so that his friend could see its face. What were supposed to have been the skull's large round eye sockets were closer to slightly flattened octagons. He had tried to carve the two sides of an empty nasal cavity, but had accidentally cut through the narrow septum piece in the middle, leaving the nose as an ordinary single triangle. By the time he had gotten down to the mouth, he had mostly given up, and the jagged line he had vaguely intended to denote the teeth had turned out softer and wavier than he had intended, leaving his Jack-o-lantern looking befuddled and anxious.

"Arthur," the Tick exclaimed, "you're an artistic genius!" and clapped him on the back for emphasis. Coming from anyone else, it would have been an obvious sarcastic insult, but the Tick didn't do sarcasm.

"I'm a what?" Arthur said once he had regained the ability to breathe and found where his glasses had landed.

"You're a true master of the pumpkin-carving craft," the Tick said. "It looks just like you."

"I..." Arthur began, but then he stopped and looked at his pumpkin from what he imagined might be the Tick's point of view, and he could begin to see it. He had certainly felt that combination of confusion and anxiety every time they went up against yet another bizarre foe. "Yeah," he said, beginning to feel better about the unintentional results of his inexpert work, "I guess it kinda does."

"Of course it does, Arthur," the Tick said. He picked up the pumpkin and turned it around so that it was staring Arthur right in the eye. "Just look at those goggles set into position so that you're ready to launch into action at a moment's notice while the mouth is clenched in a determined line against whatever adversity evil-doers might throw your way. It's a stunning self-portrait if ever I saw one! It's only missing one thing." The Tick went to stand but paused halfway up before sitting down once more and asking very seriously, "Do you mind if I add a minor collaborative touch to your masterpiece?"

"Go ahead, Tick," Arthur said.

"Thank you, Arthur, you won't regret this," the Tick said, springing to his feet. His antennae twitched as his eyes scanned the room. Then he grinned, casually pushed the sofa aside one-handed the way a normal person might move an empty cereal box, reached into the space behind it, and came up holding a handful of feathers leftover from that angry swan which had crashed through Arthur's window and attacked them at the bidding of the Swan-Master a couple of weeks ago. (Even after they had forced the Swan-Master to relinquish his control over all the local flocks, that swan had still been a giant jerk.) The Tick selected the two least damaged feathers and poked their shafts into the top of the white pumpkin like the antennae of Arthur's moth suit. "There," he said, "now it's perfect."

"Yeah, Tick," Arthur laughed happily, "now it really is."

"And look, If I snap the tips off these other two feathers," the Tick said, matching his actions to his words and, using two of the more heavily damaged swan feathers, produced a pair of bent and slightly jagged-edged shapes which ended in a V-formation instead of a point, "I can make antennae for my pumpkin too!" He added the modified feathers to the top of his pumpkin. "Now all we need to do is paint this handsome fellow blue, and we can have a pumpkin-me to match the pumpkin-you."

"You can't paint your pumpkin blue, Tick."

The Tick frowned. "Why not? Don't I get to have a non-malevolent vegetable doppelganger too?" It wasn't fair that anyone so huge could make Arthur feel like he had just kicked a puppy.

"It's not about that," Arthur tried to explain. Blue would look too much like teal, and a teal pumpkin outside your door tells trick-or-treaters that you have non-allergenic treats to give kids who can't eat peanuts and things."

The Tick's frown deepened. "And we don't have anything like that?"

"No," Arthur said, and that single word caused an uncomfortable realization to come swimming up to the surface of his mind. "Actually," he said as the thought slowly dawned on him, "we don't have any candy at all. Oh my god, we don't have any candy! How could I forget to _buy candy for Halloween_? We have to go get some right now, while there's still a chance the stores haven't run out yet!"

"Non-allergenic candy and blue paint?" the Tick said hopefully.

"Sure, Tick, if we can find any of either."

The Tick's frown disappeared in an instant, replaced by his more usual huge grin. "In that case, we're on a mission of mercy, both for all the peanut-intolerant children of the neighborhood and for pumpkin-me," he announced. "Quickly, Arthur, away!"

And they ran off together into the ~~night~~ early afternoon in search of paint and candy.

**The End**


End file.
